Tuesday, January 1, 2013

illustration friday (new)

newly hatched hognose snake

Happy New Year, dear friends and followers and valued random visitors. Welcome to the year of the snake. I tend to shrink from the sight, and even the thought, of snakes, but they symbolize some good things-- such as intelligence. I hope this will be a year in which we can all temper our emotional reactions with intelligent reasoning. The writing on this etegami means "The birth of a new year."

Happy New Year, Debbie! I tend to agree with you about snakes. I wanted to let you know that your etegami about water snakes and shedding made me excited about the year of the snake. (They also inspired some much needed purging.) It may seem odd, but you have acted the part of promotional agent for snakes everywhere. Hope your year is a great one.

A Beginner's Guide to Etegami

what is etegami?

Etegami (e= "picture"; tegami= "letter/message") are simple drawings accompanied by a few apt words. They are usually done on postcards so that they can be easily mailed off to one's friends. Though etegami has few hard-and-fast rules, traditional tools and materials include writing brushes, sumi ink, blocks of water-soluble, mineral-based pigments called gansai, and washi postcards that have varying degrees of "bleed." They often depict some ordinary item from everyday life, especially items that bring a particular season to mind.